My Big TOE, Book 3: Inner Workings

My Big TOE, written by a nuclear physicist in the language of contemporary culture, unifies science and philosophy, physics and metaphysics, mind and matter, purpose and meaning, the normal and the paranormal. The entirety of human experience (mind, body, and spirit) including both our objective and subjective worlds is brought together under one seamless scientific understanding. Section 5 presents the formal reality model in detail while Section 6 provides the wrap-up that puts everything discussed into an easily understood perspective.

Alex's Adventures in Numberland: Dispatches from the Wonderful World of Mathematics

The world of maths can seem mind-boggling, irrelevant and, let's face it, boring. This groundbreaking book reclaims maths from the geeks. Mathematical ideas underpin just about everything in our lives: from the surprising geometry of the 50p piece to how probability can help you win in any casino. In search of weird and wonderful mathematical phenomena, Alex Bellos travels across the globe and meets the world's fastest mental calculators in Germany and a startlingly numerate chimpanzee in Japan.

My Big TOE: Awakening

My Big TOE: Awakening, written by a nuclear physicist in the language of contemporary culture, unifies science and philosophy, physics and metaphysics, mind and matter, purpose and meaning, the normal and the paranormal. The entirety of human experience (mind, body, and spirit) including both our objective and subjective worlds is brought together under one seamless scientific understanding.

Dreams of Awakening: Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dream and Sleep

Dreams of Awakening is a thorough and exciting exploration of lucid dreaming theory and practice within both Western and Tibetan Buddhist contexts. It not only explores lucid dreaming practices, but also the innovative new techniques of mindfulness of dream and sleep, the holistic approach to lucidity training which the author co-created. The book is based on over 12 years of personal practice and the hundreds of lucid dreaming workshops which Charlie has taught around the world.

Fahrenheit 451

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family."

Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies

Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped the modern world. From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, he highlights the broadest movements both literal and conceptual on every continent since the Ice Age, and examines societal advances such as writing, religion, government, and technology.

Other Minds: The Octopus and The Evolution of Intelligent Life

A philosopher dons a wet suit and journeys into the depths of consciousness. Peter Godfrey-Smith is a leading philosopher of science. He is also a scuba diver whose underwater videos of warring octopuses have attracted wide notice. In this audiobook he brings his parallel careers together to tell a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself.

Fight Club

Every weekend, in basements and car parks across the country, young men with good white-collar jobs and absent fathers take off their shoes and shirts and fight each other barehanded. Then they go back to those jobs with blackened eyes and loosened teeth and the sense that they can handle anything. Fight Club is the invention of Tyler Durden, projectionist, waiter and dark, anarchic genius. And it's only the beginning of his plans for revenge on the world.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales

Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.

Our Man in Havana

In a legendary novel that appears to predict the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, Graham Greene introduces James Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman whose life in transformed when he is asked to join the British Secret Service. He agrees, and finds himself with no information to offer, so begins to invent sources and agencies which do not exist, but which appear very real to his superiors.

The Science Delusion

The science delusion is the belief that science already understands the nature of reality. The fundamental questions are answered, leaving only the details to be filled in. In this book, Dr Rupert Sheldrake, one of the world's most innovative scientists, shows that science is being constructed by assumptions that have hardened into dogmas. The sciences would be better off without them: freer, more interesting, and more fun.

High-Rise

From the author of the Sunday Times best seller Cocaine Nights comes an unnerving tale of life in a modern tower block running out of control. Within the concealing walls of an elegant forty-storey tower block, the affluent tenants are hell-bent on an orgy of destruction. Cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on "enemy" floors and the once-luxurious amenities become an arena for riots and technological mayhem.

Peter Pan

There are few characters in literature more iconic than J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. Originally introduced in 1902 in another Barrie novel (The Little White Bird), Peter's story was expanded as a standalone novel in 1911 and since then has been memorably adapted for the movies, for television, and for stage.

Ringworld

Welcome to Ringworld, an intermediate step between Dyson Spheres and planets. The gravitational force created by a rotation on its axis of 770 miles per second means no need for a roof. Walls 1,000 miles high at each rim will let in the sun and prevent much air from escaping. Larry Niven's novel Ringworld is the winner of the 1970 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

The Importance of Being Earnest (Dramatised)

Ever since the first night at the St James' Theatre on 14 February 1895, The Importance of Being Earnest has been recognised as one of the world's finest comic dramas. Now Judi Dench as Lady Bracknell leads an outstanding cast in this superb new production of Wilde's masterpiece, mounted to celebrate the centenary of the first performance.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

One Thursday lunchtime the Earth gets unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. For Arthur Dent, who has only just had his house demolished that morning, this seems already to be more than he can cope with.

Publisher's Summary

"Your world has not just four dimensions, but five, fifty, a million, or even an infinity of them!" - A. Square

For more than 100 years, Edwin Abbott's mathematical adventure has charmed and fascinated. Set in a world on one plane, Flatland takes listeners on a strange and wonderful journey. This timeless fantasy tells the story of A. Square, a character who lives in a completely flat world where all the inhabitants are geometric shapes and think their world of length and width is the only world that exists. When Square is whisked away to the Land of Three Dimensions, he shakes up his fellow two-dimensional beings with his notion of a dimension beyond their own.

One of the rare novels about math and philosophy with almost universal appeal, Flatland is simultaneously a brilliant parody of Victorian society and a fictional guide to the concepts of relativity and the multiple dimensions of space.

I read about this some years ago, though I can't remember where. As a religious studies teacher I thought I'd better read it for discussing epistemology in class. I was more than pleasantly surprised. A genuinely compelling story where you can begin to relate to two dimensional characters (a bit like Jackie Collins, then!) and begin to care about them. Hilarious from start to finish. I'm chosing to believe the sexism is sarcastic, rather than simply a product of its age, but it's funny all the same. Really well read, with great feeling. Listen to this. It'll cheer you up!

After hearing dozens of recommendations for this book I sought it out.
I was not dissapointed.

The books concepts and mathematical principles are interesting, educating and suprisingly entertaining. I loved the descriptions of the character's worlds and had no trouble turing my mind around the concepts existing in worlds with different numbers of dimensions.

The story is well told through a character that is easy to believe and ,if not have empathy towards, understand their plight.

The story was over well before I wanted it to but I suppose that only so many concetps may be put forth in a book like this before the author believes he may be overindulging or submitting their readers to a deluge of too many principles.

Highly recommended for those who wish to understand when physicists sometimes claim the existance of other dimensions which we cannot perceive and who wish to know how this can be.

17 of 17 people found this review helpful

Tustin3rdWardMember

12/04/03

Overall

"Amazing"

I was amazed that anyone could write a story about a square that would have the same level of suspense as the greatest dramas.

I was more amazed at all of the implicit social and religious commentary that could be crammed into a story without diverting attention from the plot.

Finally, I was supremely amazed that all of this was written over a century ago, while it reads like it was written yesterday... or tomorrow.

12 of 12 people found this review helpful

Francesca

Parma, Italy

14/03/04

Overall

"From math to philosophy"

The mathematical and physical concepts of this book carry an extraordinarily deep philosophical meaning: just as a Flatlander could never imagine what it's like to be 3-dimensional, we too may be unable to perceive a different dimension that is there - like perhaps the dimension spiritual beings live in. This gives me hope that there's much more to it than what we have on Earth, which is wonderful but mortal. I've enjoyed this story enormously, both as a nice funny tale and as an inspiration to cling to when I feel discouraged wondering if life has a meaning...

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Jeremy

Bay Port, MI, USA

01/06/08

Overall

"Great Book for Fantasy Writers"

This book offers one of the best explanations I have ever heard on dimensions. If you are a fantasy writer and want to know the difference between dimensions and universes, get this book. The story itself isn't all that compelling, but it is entertaining enough.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Carl

Pitman, NJ, USA

28/02/04

Overall

"Excellent social perspective"

This isn't a science book, this is a work of fiction. It is an excellent work of fiction, too. It provides the reader with a different perspective -- in fact, training the reader how to look at things from a completely different perspective. It also contains very relevant social commentary that can teach us valuable lessons about ourselves. If you're expecting a "science lesson", skip this. It is a work of fiction written in a refreshing style providing a glimpse into things that "may be" or "could be". Keep an open mind!!!

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Geoff

Brisbane, CA, USA

17/07/04

Overall

"good, but Sphereland is better"

I wish there was an audiobook version of Sphereland. Flatland is the classic book on this subject and is quite enjoyable to listen to. But, in my opinion, Sphereland has less discussion of the social structure of flatland and spends more time enlightening the reader about how we can think of four dimensions in our three dimensional world.

3 of 5 people found this review helpful

Max B

09/08/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Cheerful moments in a thought-provoking book"

The narrator seemed to hold his tone as fittingly proud for the words and temperament of our friend, the square.

The section about the IT-speaking 0 dimension seemed, to me, to be an apt critique on the complete omniscience of a God that is all, and knows all, and is only itself seeing itself, so I got a nice chuckle.

All in all, I enjoy the challenge of trying to conceive of dimensions higher than the third, which has been brought to Space by our friend from Flatland.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Publicagent

20/02/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Interesting..."

Flatland is certainly interesting. I love the idea of creatures in multiple dimensions, even if the story is a bit flat. It's really more of an exercise in 2 to 4 dimensional thinking. The story itself is humorous, at least it tries to be, but the narration is not particularly inspiring. If I wasn't interested in geometry, I wouldn't have gotten past the first hour. (I want to try out Flatterland, but no Audible currently exists.)

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Eric

South Pasadena, CA, United States

27/02/10

Overall

"Revolutionary Thought About Dimensions"

Skip the first part of it, which is a thinly veiled discussion of the Victorian era. However, the book gets exponentially more interesting once the various dimensional worlds collide. This is a revoluationary view of the dimensions. It also serves as a basic framework for beginning to think about what the fourth dimension is like, and how we can recognize its characteristics before we actually figure it out.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Ellen

Winfield, British Columbia, Canada

09/02/09

Overall

"Dated but so fun."

Set yourself in a mood to be amused by old-fashioned sensibilities and smile as you listen to a fun description of social norms in the 2D world.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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